Category Archives: Navel Gazing

I recently found myself, at the recommendation of my pastor, reading a collection of short stories by Robert Shearman entitled Remember Why You Fear Me.It was a collection of all things weird and macabre, sort of like what you might expect from a contemporary British Poe, albeit with a bit of a mildly blasphemous streak.

Toward the end of the ebook version (not the print version) is a short story entitled Tiny Deaths, which opens with Jesus’ death on the cross. In this interpretation, he hears the Father’s voice from heaven while he’s hanging there, asking him if he’s sure he wants to go through with the plan. He assents one last time, and breathes his final breath. This is followed by a resurrection…of sorts: Continue reading

The other day was the second anniversary of my foray into blogging, and what a long, strange trip it’s been. I haven’t proven to be the most consistent blogger on the Web, or the one with the biggest following, or the smartest, or the funniest, or the most talented, or the best-loved, but I’m certainly…one of them?

I guess?

But one thing I am sure of is that starting this blog was a good call. Some of the things that have happened since I began it:

I’ve almost finished a novel (which is more of a distraction from blogging than anything, but whatever).

I thought that for this august occasion (which, ironically, is a June occasion), it might be fun to run down my blog’s top 10 posts, along with some of my commentary on them. Unless it’s not fun, in which case, I’m sorry. Continue reading

For the record, I’m not some rich kid whose daddy owns a yacht. I was actually working on this ship.

A week before I proposed to my now-wife, I was sitting on the roof of a ship, talking to her on someone else’s cellphone. I may have also been a little drunk.

We were talking about our dreams for the future, and how neither one of us really had any. “I’ve been thinking a lot about it,” I slurred, Captain Morgan running down my chin, “and it turns out that all I really want out of life is to be a housewife.” Continue reading

Just a quick PSA that my long-form essayFlappy Bird, Fame, and the Fall From Grace is available for your reading pleasure in the latest issue of Christ and Pop Culture Magazine, which you can buy from the iOS newsstand here. It’s a reflective piece on what fame means, why so many yearn for it, and why so many, having experienced it, run from it. The issue has a lot of other good stuff (okay, I admit: better stuff), too, like D.L. Mayfield’s experiences with some of the Somalis who starred in Captain Phillips, and her thoughts on the Twitter flamewar between noted comedian/talking rat Patton Oswalt and RUF campus minister Sammy Rhodes. It’s three bucks, and it’s more than worth it. I promise.

Also, that three bucks goes to pay the writers. Like me. So there’s that.

I was sitting in one of those ugly, overly lit conference rooms that literally every hotel on the planet has. The ones that are huge but feel cramped because of their low drop ceilings, where the carpet is always a hideous, mass-produced Victorian-esque pattern, and the walls are pockmarked with pee-colored folding dividers and the ceilings are cheap, foamy tile studded with fluorescent lights.

I was at intern and staff training for Reformed University Fellowship, the Presbyterian Church in America’s campus ministry program. Continue reading

[NOTE: If you’d rather read something less squishy and more concrete, or less Lutheran and more Reformed, my total-BFF-who-I-just-met, Derek Rishmawy, has a great piece over at Christ and Pop Culture.]

In addition to being a blogger, memoirist, and in-demand speaker, Don Miller is also known for being hungry like the wolf.

I admit it. Like pretty much every Christian my age, I had a torrid love affair with Blue Like Jazz(the book, not the movie, but also kind of the movie). What can I say? Jazz is to us post-evangelicals what Atlas Shrugged is to libertarians, or what The Lord of the Rings is to hippies, or what Martha Stewart Living is to really terrible people.

My non-fiction debut, HOLY SH*T! The Dirtiest Bits in the Bible, is in the works.

Things are a little slow on my blog these days, because people keep giving me paid writing gigs. (I know, weird, right?) Still, I keep it around for those moments when I feel like writing something that no one else would ever publish. Like, for instance, stuff about papal encyclicals and terrible horror movies.

I dream of a day when all will be made new, and when everything will taste like beer. Seriously, someone get on that.